Spot.us goes live

I’ve only had nice things to say about my friend David Cohn’s journalistic venture Spot.us, and I’m thrilled that today marks the official launch of his project.

The premise of Spot.us is simple: journalists pitch a story, a community finds it important to fund that story, a campaign is built to commission it, and it gets written. Writes David:

The process of journalism should be participatory - and perhaps one way it can be made participatory is if the public has the opportunity to commission the journalism they want to see.

Sounds simple, but it’s a quietly revolutionary way of circumscribing the existing media economy. With our help, it could be a big success, and it could inspire other similar projects. Good luck David!